great deal of responsibility in her life, but she had never felt the intensity of it the way she did while driving Jackson to safety. She didn’t like not having a game plan prepared for herself way in advance. Not that she couldn’t think on her feet. Being a psychiatrist required that constantly. But that had taken a considerable amount of training.
So the first thing she started to do was to make up a plan of action. It’s easy, she told herself. Just get him somewhere dark. Away from the sun. Like a vampire. Only, this vampire didn’t burst into ash at the touch of the sun. He merely went stiff and, when she reached out to touch his wrist to seek his pulse, he was ice cold. He had curled slightly toward the door, turned away from her as if to hide his condition from her. Probably because of some instinctive need to conceal his weakness.
“Okay, mister, we have to start with a place,” she said aloud to Sargent. “What about Uncle Bob’s? No, wait, he’s got workmen there while he’s away. Maybe Manon’s?” Manon was her cousin and he had a very remote cabin just a few miles northwest, in Sullivan County. She took a moment to debate whether the patrol car would be able to make it down the rough drive to the house. It was a good idea to have four-wheel drive when attempting it, especially after snow or rain. It hadn’t snowed since the end of February, so it wasn’t as though she would be trying to drive through snow. It hadn’t rained in the past couple of days either, so the drive wouldn’t be pitted with thick mud.
“Sold! To the shepherd and his master,” she said, satisfied with the plan. She was talking to Sargent because if she didn’t she’d keep looking over at Jackson. There was absolutely nothing peaceful or sleeplike about the way he was just then. He was leaning awkwardly against the door, his skin as pale white as marble even though she knew he was tanned from his time training outdoors with his dog. He lay rigid, no relaxation, as though every muscle in his body was tensed to the breaking point. If he had not had color in his hair and brows, he would have looked like a marble statue. A light, misting steam lifted from him, though it didn’t fog the windows or feel like there was a great amount of heat emanating from him. In fact, when she reached out to touch him he felt so very cold that it was unnerving and alarming to her. She wondered if he could hear or even see. My god how horrifying, to be completely paralyzed and yet able to see anything and everything that was happening to you, with nothing you could do about it. No arguments, no ability to express wishes … no chance to scream or fight to protect yourself.
“It’s okay,” she kept saying on small rapid breaths. “It’s okay. We’ll be in the dark in no time at all and you’ll be just fine. You’ll be normal again.” She couldn’t sound afraid. She couldn’t sound upset or even empathetic for him. Just like she did when dealing with a patient, she tried to project calm, support, and confidence.
When she made the turnoff onto the rugged drive to Manon’s house she felt a small wave of relief wash over her. After successfully traversing the half-mile drive she pulled up to the small cabin. It was deceptively rough-looking on the outside with its frayed log walls, but she knew it was quite beautiful on the inside.
There was an attached garage at the re supernaturalag.ar of the cabin and she pulled up in front of it. She reassured Sargent she would be right back and ran back around to the front of the house and up the steps. She glanced around before accessing the clever little hidey-hole Manon had built into the wall, a silly thing to do really with the only possible witnesses being the deer … or maybe a bear. She let herself in and raced to the back of the house. She went into the garage and hit the automatic door lift. Sunlight broke into the blackness of the garage, the lifting door creating its own sort of sunrise. She was ducking under the door as soon as it was halfway up and back in the driver’s seat an instant later. In her anxiousness she gave